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‘I’ll never forgive or forget’ – Griffin Dunne on the darkness that overtook his gilded Hollywood upbringing

Griffin Dunne’s memoir is full of wonderful tales about Martin Scorsese, Carrie Fisher and Madonna. But the killing in 1982 of his 22-year-old sister – and the subsequent trial – overshadows everything

He tells how Sean Connery rescued him from the family swimming pool, how Billy Wilder critiqued his childhood pranks and how he roomed with Carrie Fisher before she went off to make Star Wars (“This movie is going to be a fucking disaster,” she said). He had secured his breakout role in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London, playing the undead grad student Jack Goodman, doomed to haunt the adult cinemas of Soho. He turned down The Fly and Sex, Lies, and Videotape in favour of making Who’s That Girl, with Madonna, and a reviled comedy, Me and Him, in which he played a yuppie architect who quarrels with his talking penis.

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